Socialism: the trick the Tories have been missing | Brief letters

Quoted in your feature (How the Tory election machine fell apart, G2, 27 June) Paul Goodman of the ConservativeHome website thinks young voters were not aware that “socialism is a threat”. He also thinks the Tories “need something to shift the balance between rich and poor”. Wouldn’t that be, er, socialism?
Joseph Oldaker
Nuneaton, Warwickshire

• Lynsey Hanley (Review, 24 June) proposes that we should “only permit the right to buy in areas where social housing can be built at the same rate at which it’s sold off”. In view of the scale of our housing crisis, shouldn’t we stop selling off such homes altogether?
Francis Prideaux
London

• 17 June: Theresa May gives £5m to Grenfell Tower survivors (155 families). 26 June: May gives extra £6m to Buck House survivors (1 family). (Queen in line for princely sum of £82m from estate, 27 June)
Glenys Canham
London

• How encouraging to learn that pork scratchings are not only nice but more or less a health food too (Notes & Queries, G2, 2 June). And made in Corby. When I have completed my development of turnip oil, Britain will have two world beaters to sell globally.
Judith Brundin
Oxford

• “Sitting in the refined surroundings of a hotel in Soho, London…” (Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy talks to Homa Khaleeli, G2, 27 June). My mother, born in 1913, would have called “refined” and “Soho” a contradiction in terms. How times have changed.
Catherine Roome
Staplehurst, Kent

• I often hear owls hooting in the trees in my garden, and, like Susie White (Country Diary, 27 June), I put up an owl nest box of a chimney design a few years ago, hoping for a more permanent occupation. All I achieved was an extra home for grey squirrels, the pests that eat all my cherries and strawberries before they are ripe. I took it down in the end and am back to just the one squirrel family per year. Even so, I have yet to eat a ripe cherry from either of my two trees, now 20 years old.
Ken Vines
Horrabridge, Devon

• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com

• Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters